But there are plenty of Misadventures in the archives to keep you busy if you really need a Misadventures fix. 🙂

“Fortunate”:

“The First Book” by Rita Dove:

Open it

Go ahead, it won’t bite.
Well…maybe a little.

More a nip, like. A tingle.
It’s pleasurable, really.

You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.

Sure, it’s hard to get started;
remember learning to use

knife and fork? Dig in:
You’ll never reach the bottom.

It’s not like it’s the end of the world –
Just the world as you think

you know it.

“Saved paper”:

Back in the 1990s, there was a little card shop near the Uptown Theater. I can’t remember what it was called, but it used these little bags patterned with that I thought were too pretty (and looked too useful, even if I didn’t have a use for them…then) to just throw away. Today I stumbled across them again and now I have a use for them! I’m frankly amazed they survived all the moves!!

I took the bag apart and stuck it on the page, then tried to brighten it up a bit with some watercolors.

“I thought I’d enjoy these breaks from the naughty boys, but now I’m wondering if I need to be concerned about this art journaling business.” -Mayhem

Congrats to Courtney S, who won Collusion (Diversion #2) (2nd ed) by Eden Winters! Collusion was released by Rocky Ridge Books on June 20.

But there are plenty of Misadventures in the archives to keep you busy if you start to go into withdrawal or something. 🙂

You’ve probably noticed I’ve been reading all sorts of books about art journaling over the past few months. If you’re curious, I’ve included a couple of pages from one of my art journals below, with links to posts with more pictures on my tumblr. I will definitely be posting more pages to my tumblr.

One of the non-abstract pages (newsprint covered with watercolor washes; black pen; watercolor pencil):

And one of the abstract pages (colored pencil and black brush pen):

No big deal, I just forgot I had an artistic streak… for 30+ years. D’oh!

“…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…” -Mayhem

That pose makes my spine cringe.